Friday, July 24, 2009

Various Harvard threads

Richard Bradley, author of Harvard Rules as well as other books, has plenty of Harvard related things to write about, including the Henry Louis Gates affair (which I've heard about seemingly nonstop for several days) and the Vanity Fair article, on his blog. And then there's a new Newsweek article on the months-old story of the student who was not allowed to graduate at the ceremony this year because of a purported connection (the nature of which is not, as far as I know, publicly known) to a murder that took place at a Harvard dorm.

The only "positive" news I've seen about Harvard lately is its portrayal as a hotbed of high tech activity in Harvard graduate Ben Mezrich's new book, the Accidental Billionaires, about the building of Facebook. Of course, even that's somewhat tainted, since Mezrich, according to several articles, essentially made up portions of the book.

At this point, I'm hoping that Harvard stops showing up in the press for a while. (And then starts showing up in a more positive light.)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The press loves to pick on the winners.

Unknown said...

The press loves to pick on the winners.

Don't look now!

Seriously, though, this is no jealous plot against Harvard. Gates (rightly or wrongly) overreached and stirred up a firestorm only aided by the verbal involvement of the President. Vanity Fair is just a coincidence. As for Newsweek, well, it's not exactly the paragon of journalism, especially in these troubled times for the industry.